Monthly Archives: May 2017

I am back home after a week and a half in the UK and I’m full of thoughts about the ways that people talk about Digital (especially tools) when what they mean to discuss are People. Or, Organizations. Or, Processes.

I was part of the group who put on #FutureHappens in London (well it’s a trio really at this point, not grand enough to be a triumvirate though) and while we do say (or, I do say) “We don’t know what’s going to happen” at these events, we really kind of do. We start the conversation off talking about tech of some kind, and end up talking about people and processes. In this case we talked about teaching and learning, through the lens of social media. Not social media in isolation, but very specifically in context, and the rules were we needed to do it constructively.

The “we” there is the other folks in the room too, of course, they are the main content of these events (which I’d like to stop calling Hacks, because of the gendered nature of that language, and I’m working on convincing my partners in crime on this). And the people in the room were encouraged to get all of their anxieties and fears and also hopes out of the way (as it were) before getting into the core of the day, where we worked through the setups (you can see them on the website). These I found fascinating, and so while others have written about the day as a whole, I want to focus on the Burnt (that’s what we called this preliminary part) in particular.

And I want to especially focus on the discussion I saw, in post-its and in the room, around connection and social media. During the event, while people were discussing and working, I took the things that they had written on their respective “Burnt” post-its and clustered them into themes It seemed to me that when people had hopes for social media, it circles around connection. This is characteristic of people who work in teaching and learning who have experienced the ways that social media (across various places and platforms) can connect students to each other, to faculty members, to their interests in their course of study, and to the wider world.

Some of these connections were positive. Some of these connections were negative. So, when people have fears around social media, they also circle around connection. To whom were student being connected? To supportive community members? To bullies? To places and people they did not understand? To places and people they could see themselves as a part of?

Likewise there was a (to me) unexpected discussion of disconnection (I know, I should have expected it). There was a thread that worried that social media use and presence would facilitate disconnection of students, from the same list of people and places–from each other, from their teachers, from their communities. And from themselves–a sense that engaging with social media can be inherently alienating from one’s self, that one can be lost, that the authentic self (whatever that means) can become subsumed in the surfaces of social media performance.

I think that where we can get into trouble is when we assume that one will crowd out the other. That you are either connected, totally, or disconnected, totally. When the fact is, as with the V and R continuum, (any continuum!!) there are many in-between points, and many places where we are both, just in different contexts.

So, a student in class on social media might be disconnected in one sense from the room, but connected in another sense to peers outside of the room, or even practitioners relevant to the discussion in the room.. Or, students can be disconnected from one group online even as they engage intensely with another. Or, students can connect with one aspect of themselves while de-emphasizing another. These are not monolithic states. They are modes that shift, with priorities and practices.

So, do social media practices connect or disconnect?

Yes.

When people are connected to one group, does it come at the expense of connection to another? Is connection a zero-sum game?

What is the utility of disconnection, of being aware of practices and places elsewhere, but leaving them alone?

I don’t, as usual, have answers. But I think this dyad, connect: disconnect, has something to it. It’s not just about engagement, it encapsulates fears and hopes that people have for digital places in higher and further education. From whom are we disconnected? To whom are we connected? Who is missing? Who can help? Who can hurt?

Social media is another place full of people. The perils of humanity don’t disappear in digital places, and are frequently amplified.

So, what will we make of this? What can we create with digital, rather than take as given?

Look, I am aware of the ego it takes to get up in front of people and hold forth about things, I’ve been doing that for just a little while now and I’m a Leo so it works for me (and, I hope, for the people who invite me). And I likewise think it probably takes a fair amount of ego these days to think to oneself, “You know, I really would like to lead X” where X might be a department, a trade union, a library, a university, a town, a country, or your very own piece of the interwebs.

The thing is, for it to be a good move for more than just you, the desire to lead cannot end with “I’d like to be in charge.” It really shouldn’t start there, either. I am living in a country where ‘I’d Like to be in Charge” is currently in the White House, my State Legislature, and also occupying the majority of both national Houses of Congress. ‘‘I’d Like to be in Charge” with an added dollop of “Don’t Tell Me What to Do” is currently riding roughshod over the social contract in the UK as well as in the US, deciding that coalitions are for losers and that caring for the welfare of other people is a sucker’s game.

There are likely several ways to be a toxic leader but this highly- visible -at- this- particular- moment model of “Leadership for the Sake of Me and Screw You Guys” (even as the rhetoric of these leaders is about countries, groups, people, institutions) is to my mind one of the most toxic. Leadership for personal gain serves no one but the person in the leadership position.

That’s not the kind of leadership we need, if we are concerned about our society. Or any other collection of people.

So when I and my ego get up in front of people in leadership positions in education next week, I want very much to swiftly reach a point where we are NOT talking about them as individuals.

Even as I recognize they are people.

Even as I emphasize that their humanity is a crucial part of their leadership potential.

In the Jisc Digital Leaders course I will be resisting any requests for to-do lists, or top-tips around practice. I will be attempting, even as I get people to talk and think about themselves, to center other people in the minds of the participants. Many of them will show up already with this orientation. We start people off with examining their individual practices because that’s an important way in to thinking about the logics of those practices, and the logics of other people. We move from mapping their individual digital and physical practices to a broader consideration of their organizational practices and priorities because that should be the point when you are in a leadership position: everything except yourself.

Who you are as a leader is to some extent about you as a person, but effective constructive leadership is also about what you would like to do, and for whom you would like to do these things. Leaders should value the voices of others, and de-center themselves as much as possible because collective action is effective action, and requires many, not few, or one person’s priorities. Leaders should give more credit than they take, because they are confident enough in themselves and the strengths of their team to allow others to shine and pull their weight, and be seen and heard.

When I think about effective leadership, I recognize the importance of leaders bringing their own particular set of expertise to their work. I also want leaders who don’t know everything, but are willing to learn. I want leaders who don’t have to do everything, and who trust enough to delegate. I want leaders who know enough to let go of control, because none of us really have it anyway. We need, collectively, leaders who can see the places where they can and should work towards change in their organizations, in their communities, and recognize the need to do so collectively, and decidedly not from a place of “Good Thing I’m in Charge.”

I am looking forward to the work and conversations we engage in next week. And hope the work continues beyond the confines of the course itself. The course is ostensibly about “Digital Leadership” but our need to create and sustain effective, constructive leadership models is about more than digital places and practices. We need them as a counter to the toxic leaders we have facilitated in the past, and which threaten us now.